


A Sacred Space

by Perpetual Motion (perpetfic)



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Engagement, First Kiss, M/M, Mentions of Clowns, This is a love story, clowns do not play a major role in this fic, don't worry it gets better very quickly, mild homophobia, positive role models in the catholic church, prompts fest, thank you sonny for telling us several times you had them, this is not a creepy clown story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-12
Updated: 2020-02-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:00:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22682098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perpetfic/pseuds/Perpetual%20Motion
Summary: Rafael proposes, and he goes big to do it. (prompts: big, cute public engagement; clowns)
Relationships: Rafael Barba/Dominick "Sonny" Carisi Jr.
Comments: 33
Kudos: 91
Collections: Barisi Valentine Prompt Challenge 2020





	A Sacred Space

"Weird," Sonny says as the ferry pulls away from the dock and chugs towards Staten Island. 

Rafael sends a tersely-worded letter to his heart rate as it jumps at Sonny's tone. He curls his hands into fists in his coat pockets, his left hand clenching around the ring box he's had for three weeks. "What's weird?" he asks. 

Sonny gestures with his chin to a person in full clown gear across the deck. They're in a rainbow wig and white grease paint with blue circles around their eyes and a bright orange mouth. "That's the fourth clown I've seen since we left the house."

Rafael pretends to give the clown a studious look. They're making balloon animals for a small crowd of kids who shriek with delight at every step. "Is there a convention or something?"

Sonny shrugs and turns away from the clown to watch the ferry kick up the spray as they cross to Staten Island. "There must be, right?" He wraps an arm around Rafael's shoulders and presses a kiss to the top of his head when Rafael curls in against him. "You're already shivering," he says. 

"I'm cold and damp," Rafael replies, happy to play up his grumpiness of being on the ferry in winter to further distract Sonny. "It's a defense mechanism."

Sonny laughs and pats himself down, pulling a dark blue scarf from one of his coat pockets. He drapes it over Rafael's neck and tucks the ends under the edges of Rafael's coat. "Better?" Sonny asks.

Rafael is tempted to toss his whole plan into the Harbor and propose right this second. He pushes the idea away by worming his hands under Sonny's coat and pressing a kiss to the side of Sonny's neck. 

*

Sonny Carisi first kissed a boy in the sacristy off the sanctuary that the altar boys used to put their white robes on over their Sunday best. The boy's name was Justin, and immediately after services, he had tearfully confessed his sin to his parents. 

Dominick and Tessa Carisi--confronted with an angry, threatening father calling their son an abomination--responded in a marital box step best-learned at Catholic Youth Organization dance lessons. Tessa slapped the man in the face then immediately stepped up to stop Justin's mother before she could do more than sputter in rage. Dominick grabbed Justin's father by the lapels of his Sunday-best suit coat and dragged him into whisper-close range to make sure the man knew _exactly_ the avenging rage Dominick would bring down upon him should he dare to say a word against his son. 

"You don't have to like it," Dominick hissed to Justin's father, completely unaware Sonny was near enough to overhear, "but I will make a point to break every, single one of your teeth if my boy overhears anything that could remotely suggest he's not a good person."

"You know what he is!" Justin's mother yelled at Tessa; her hard-edged screech of indignation carrying like a soprano solo across the church lawn. 

"He's a good, sweet boy!" Tessa bellowed in response, the vibrating bass of maternal love making the soprano solo seem weak and uninteresting in comparison. 

Sonny, confused by the tatters of shame on his lovingly made sense of self, fled to Father Francis and confessed the whole thing instantly, crying through the entire recitation though trying to hold back his tears. 

Father Francis, frozen in shock at Sonny's despair, snapped out of it once Sonny pressed his mouth closed and started to shiver from head to toe. "Tell me one thing, Sonny," Father Francis said. "Did you ask Justin if you could kiss him?"

Sonny nodded hard. His tears sped up. 

"And did he say yes?"

Sonny nodded again and wiped his forearm across his eyes. 

"Sit with me," Father Francis said, gesturing to the nearest pew. He reached into the pocket of his robe and handed Sonny a handkerchief. "Here."

Sonny blew his nose and swiped at his eyes again, and crumpled Father Francis's handkerchief between his hands. "I know the devil likes to trick us, Father, but I've been thinking about it for a long time. Like, a _long_ time, and I've been praying about it, too, and I told God if it was wrong, I wouldn't do it. If it was wrong, he just had to tell me, and I wouldn't do it."

"What did God tell you?"

Sonny stared at the floor. "Nothing, I don't think. I looked for a sign that he'd said something, and I didn't see or feel an answer, and then today, when Justin and I were putting on our robes, I thought maybe I should just ask. If he said no, that was God telling me not to do it. But then I did ask, and he said yes, and I thought…" Sonny squeezed his eyes shut. 

Father Francis touched Sonny's shoulder, waiting for Sonny to look at him. "God giving us the right answer doesn't always mean it's going to be the easy one," he said. "Sometimes, he gives us the right answer because we can learn from it and because we need it to know who we are."

Sonny stared at Father Francis. "So...it's okay that I kissed Justin? That I wanted to kiss Justin?"

"I think so, yes."

"But Justin--" Sonny took in a shuddering breath. "He didn't--"

"God told you who you were," Father Francis said. "And he showed you something to learn from."

When Sonny told Rafael this story so many years later, the two of them curled around each other on the couch, he'd gone quiet at that point, and Rafael asked, very softly, "What did you learn?"

Sonny looked up at Rafael, his face bright with affection and kindness and contentment. "Compassion. When I left the sanctuary, Ma was hugging Justin. He was crying, and his parents weren't around anymore. Dad told me that Justin had gotten into his dad's face and told him to back off, that he'd _wanted_ to kiss me and _liked_ kissing me. His parents were so angry, they drove off and left him. But my parents? They stepped right up and gave him love and compassion, even when he'd just made me feel so bad. They couldn't stop themselves from being kind to him because they understood why he'd done what he did."

"Because his parents were dicks?"

Sonny smiled and bent his head so he could brush their noses together. "Because he was scared. Because he had the same feelings I had and didn't know what to do with them, but he couldn't ask his parents what to do like I could. Mine told me to pray on it, and I did. Justin's would have probably sent him away to some conversion camp or something."

"What happened to him?"

"Justin? Ma called over to his aunt. She was nice. Came over and took him home and went to court to get all the papers signed. She got him some therapy to deal with his parents being shitty, and he's turned out all right. He's married now. Still lives on Staten Island. He and his husband are foster parents."

Rafael watched the way reciting Justin's success made Sonny seem to glow from within. He pulled him in for a kiss. Looking back later, Rafael realized that was the first time he'd looked at Sonny and thought, "I want to marry him."

*

When they get off the ferry, Rafael finds their Lyft and steadies his shaking hands by sheer force of will. 

"You okay?" Sonny asks, noticing the slight tremor that briefly takes over Rafael's whole body. 

"Just chilly, still," Rafael covers. He gives Sonny a quick grin. "Or maybe I'm afraid I'll get struck by lightning."

Sonny laughs and squeezes Rafael's hand before rubbing it between his own to warm him up. "You'll be all right. It's just a blessing."

It's not, but Sonny doesn't know that. Rafael has spent the last few weeks laying down a believable story to get Sonny on the ferry and into his childhood church. Tessa had done a lot of the leg work, reaching out to her vast network of people until they'd found someone who was a friend of a friend with a fairly new baby in the family. The grandmother had been one of Sonny's Sunday School teachers, and she'd been more than happy to call Sonny and invite him to the service to bless the baby. 

"We're calling it a blessing," she'd told Sonny in the firm but slightly wavery voice of elder church ladies everywhere. "My grandson was never as devoted as you, and his wife's not religious at all, so we're just happy they're letting us do a little something in the church."

"Well, of course I'll come," Sonny had replied, and he hadn't seen the way Rafael had smiled in triumph as Sonny leaned towards his phone speaker and kept chopping vegetables. "You just tell me what time, and I'll make it."

"I'll send you a card, and you bring that young man of yours. We've only seen photos."

Sonny had glanced at Rafael, who'd shrugged and nodded. "He'll do his best to join us."

"Good. Good. You take care."

And now, three weeks later, they're pulling up to the church. It's warmly lit from the inside, the stained glass windows shimmering in the growing darkness of an early winter evening. Rafael gets out of the car first, keeping hold of Sonny's hand as Sonny slides across the seat and follows him. They step into the vestibule, and before Sonny can take in his surroundings, Rafael grabs him by the lapels of his coat and pulls him into the sacristy. 

"Rafael!" Sonny huffs out, a chuckle slipping past his surprised tone, "What are you doing?"

Rafael looks up at him and all his nerves disappear. This is right. The only thing he can possibly do in this moment is ask Sonny Carisi to marry him. There are no other options that fit. He cups the back of Sonny's head and pulls him in for a kiss, lips pressed together for just a few seconds. "You kissed your first boy in this room," he murmurs, the beginning of his planned speech.

"Yeah, I did," Sonny says, eyes crinkling with confusion, but still shining so bright with his love for Rafael. 

"I thought maybe you'd like to kiss your last boy here, too," Rafael replies, and it's so easy to take the ring box from his pocket, to drop to one knee, and to watch Sonny's face as his expression slips from loving confusion, to amazement, to absolute awe.

"Rafael," Sonny says, eyes filling with tears. 

"You are the most loving person I know, Sonny. And you've chosen to love me. When you told me the story of kissing Justin in this room, I knew I wanted to marry you. Because you look at the world with compassion and kindness. Because your first kiss somehow did and didn't end in disaster, and what you took away from it was that God loved you, and that you deserved love. And then you looked at me and decided I deserved it too."

Rafael pauses to take a slow, steady breath. His own eyes are brimming with tears. "Sonny, please marry me."

Sonny drops to his knees and cups Rafael's face between his hands. "What else could I possibly do?" he asks, then leans in and kisses Rafael. 

It's different than the kiss from a few minutes before. There's a depth of feeling and connection that sings through it, from Sonny to Rafael and back again. When Sonny pulls away, face damp with happy tears, he wipes Rafael's own off his cheeks. "Yeah," he says. "I'll marry you."

Rafael chuckles wetly and takes the ring from the box. He slips it onto Sonny's left ring finger and rubs his thumb across it. He sits for a moment, memorizing the way the light shines off Sonny's ring, the way Sonny smiles when he meets his eyes again. "One last thing," he says as he stands and helps Sonny up.

"What's that?" Sonny asks. 

"We're not here for a baby's blessing," Rafael says and leads Sonny out the door and into the sanctuary. They're at the last row of pews, and each one is filled with Sonny and Rafael's family and friends. They're holding lit candles, and everyone is smiling. 

"Rafael--what--" Sonny stops short as he takes everyone in. His parents. His sisters. His nieces. His cousins. Friends from as far back as preschool. Lucia and a cluster of people from Rafael's old neighborhood. The squad and Carmen and Rita and a few judges, even. And up at the front, waiting at the end of the aisle, it's Father Francis. He's older and grayer, but his eyes are as kind as Sonny remembers. 

And in the front pew, on the left-hand side, are Justin and his husband and their kids. Two fosters and one adopted out of care, Rafael knows, because the amazing man beside him had so much love to give he'd never lost track of the first boy he kissed. 

Rafael can't believe he's so lucky that the man beside him has deemed him worthy of such unflagging kindness and love. 

"Come on," Rafael says, tucking Sonny's hand into the crook of his elbow and placing his own hand over it. "Let's get our blessing."

Sonny turns to him, the awe coming back into his eyes. "I have no idea how you pulled this off, but this is the most beautiful thing anyone's ever done for me."

Rafael smiles pulls Sonny's hand from the crook of his elbow so he can kiss his knuckles. "I had a lot of help," he says, gesturing briefly to the crowded pews. "But I have to thank your mother for the distraction clowns."

"Distraction--" Sonny barks a laugh, and it echoes wonderfully into the eaves. It makes some of the people in the pews laugh, and then the laugh rolls out from there until everyone is laughing. 

"I was afraid you'd put it together," Rafael says, lifting his voice so everyone can hear him. "Even with the cover story, I thought you'd figure me out, so I asked your mom what to do, and she said you never could look away from a clown."

Sonny laughs again, pulling Rafael to him to share the laugh in a kiss. "I can never look away from you," he says, wicked humor flashing in his eyes. "Take that as you will."

Rafael laughs and tugs lightly at Sonny's coat to keep him close. "I'll take it with love," he says. "For the rest of my life."


End file.
